Have you ever fallen in love where it’s just gross? Like, to the point that you just can’t stop thinking about that person and you can’t listen to a song without thinking of them? That love that Usher talked about when you hang up and all you want to do is call them back right away. The love that makes you question if you even have a type because at the end of the day, it would take two to have a type and nobody compares to that person. That love is fun, right? Now, I’m not trying to be a pessimist, but at some point that tends to die down a bit. That’s normal in my opinion. I’m not here to argue about that point, because I think that my point is that I wish I would’ve taken advantage of that time more in the beginning of relationships before getting all serious. Yea, it’s great to grow up together and become more responsible as a couple and yea, it’s fun when you’re already used to just seeing each other and just ripping each other’s clothes off without worrying what you just ate for dinner. My point is, it’s so damn fun to start falling in love and while I pray that the “falling” part is never the part you look back on to keep the relationship alive, I hope that you can look back with your partner and just laugh about all the dumb shit while you were falling for one another.

My theory is that the “falling” part is always the time where you focus on your good qualities and start realizing the annoying qualities of your partner are cute… until they’re not. When I was younger, I didn’t take advantage of those times as much. When I was in high school I was already looking for the girl I could imagine marrying. This is how I imagined it.

• Step 1: Meet the girl, imagine if she’d fit in at the wedding I always thought I would have at a young age with the big ass family, and imagine if her family would get along with my family at the reception. No big deal.

• Step 2: Figure out if the girl and I would make a cute couple. I can’t be the only one crying once my lady walks down the aisle. I need a couple of my homies to be like, “damn bro, good call”.

• Step 3: Like the girl for a long time and take her on a date and be too chicken to make a move.

• Step 4: Become upset internally when she got with another dude at school.

• Step 5: Repeat.

I got better once I got older and I started saving a little bit of money to spend money on a first date. Here’s how I upgraded.

• Step 1: Meet the girl, figure out if she’d be down to get married with a Banda at the reception with a DJ on during the breaks, ask if she wanted a big family and ultimately hope she only wanted like 3 or 4 kids.

• Step 2: Like the girl. Ask the girl for her number and start having text conversations.

• Step 3: Ask the girl out on a date for dinner and a movie. The classic date move.

• Step 4: Pick her up at her house and open the door for her to get in the car. Hope she eventually opens the door for you from the inside. If she does this, she’s won points.

• Step 5: Don’t make the move on the first date because it would be too quick, but if a good song comes on in the shuffle you do what you got to do.

• Step 6: Date. Make sure she always had a flower at least once a week, especially on the days where she may have had a long day at work.

• Step 7: If you really like her, you take her to visit the places where you were raised. Have her meet the siblings and then the parents. The whole nine yards.

This was the period where I had fun. I was creative. I was always coming up with ideas to be impressive. Looking back, I was probably foolish for the most part. I’m not exactly sure that I would be recommending that to young Christian if I was to meet him. I put myself out there. I was practically doing everything possible to ensure that the next date was set to become better than the next. After a while of being in this cycle (I couldn’t seriously date everyone, sheesh), I started realizing I was probably doing too much for the wrong person. I had a pretty good track record of not having to lie or anything, I just quickly lost interest and I was very good at being blunt if I didn’t feel anything was going to happen with someone. Made for a lot of awkward conversations at times (maybe I’ll make a blog about that one day), but I think I had good intentions at the end of the day.

This is when I realized that I had to make some sort of change to ensure I wasn’t just going all out on a first date for the wrong person. I had a few first dates by this time and I was starting to lose hope in the whole “destiny” thing where I would just meet the right person and we’d both know and then we run away together to New York City or something. So I started being conservative on these first dates. I still did the car door opening thing, (I still have to be a gentleman), but there was no way my wallet could afford these expensive dates at the end of the day. So I started getting better. Here’s how I did.

• Step 1: Find the girl, hope she would be okay with having a big dance floor to get down to whatever we wanted on our wedding night, and hope she got along with my fam.

• Step 2: Hope she likes traveling just as much as I do so we can talk about future trips.

• Step 3: Do things I’ve always wanted to do together. Do weird stuff. Stuff I never did before.

• Step 4: Make it official, I was not going to waste my time on something that wasn’t exclusive.

• Step 5: Let things ride out and see where things go. Never needed to rush things, if they’re going to work out, they’ll work out.

So that was probably the last phase I’ve ever really gone on and it was a good time, but looking back it had some opportunity. The moral of this whole story is that I had the most fun when I was just being a fool. Sure, there was probably some hurt at the end of the day for those situations that didn’t work out, but I would do it all over again if I could just to feel the honeymoon phase. So, for the love of all that is great, please make sure you always cherish acting a fool. In the words of Ted Mosby, “Making an ass of yourself is really underrated”. So go out and make the biggest ass of yourself because I can tell you firsthand that you don’t get an opportunity to cherish those “get to know you” moments twice, so when you look back on them it’s always better to have loved too much than to not have loved as much. Every single day.